A Beard Papa store quietly opened Aug. 12 in Salt Lake Shopping Center, right next door to another shop that opened the same day -- a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cafe. Hawaii Beard Papa shops and local locations of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are owned by the Sullivan Family of Cos., parent company of Foodland Super Market Ltd.

The Salt Lake Beard Papa joins the Waikiki location, which opened last summer inside the Food Pantry at 2370 Kuhio Ave., and Oahu's second Beard Papa in the Hawaii Kai Foodland.

It's odd to characterize them as such, but the Hawaii Beard Papas will have two new sister Beard Papas by the end of the year.

One will be in the Pearl City Shopping Center. There is a Foodland in that complex, but the Beard Papa there will be a stand-alone store, to be open by late September or early October, said Sheryl Toda, Foodland's director of corporate communications.

A Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf also will open in the center and will have a drive-through window, she said.

For townies, Beard Papa's cream puffs will be available at a stand-alone store fronting Ward Centre on Auahi Street by the end of the year. There are no plans to open a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf location in the Starbucks-saturated Ward complex.

Beard Papa's cream puffs one day will be served in Ewa Beach and in the under-construction Outrigger Waikiki Beach Walk project, according to the Web site of Muginoho USA Inc., the U.S. arm of Beard Papa's Japan-based parent company, Muginoho Ltd.

Oahu residents used to have to wait to go cream-filled choux-shopping until Muginoho's periodic treks to Shirokiya for product demonstrations -- and wait they did, in lines that would snake through the store.

The Salt Lake Beard Papa and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shops will celebrate their grand opening from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Coupons for free half-dozens will be given to the first 100 people and there will be "free samples throughout the day, entertainment, balloon animals and prizes," Toda said.

Not duck soup

Alan Wong, one of the 12 founders of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement, has gotten some more national ink.

Phil Roberts, an executive with Parasole Restaurant Holdings, a Minnesota-based restaurant development company, singled out the "roast duck and a sweetish sauce" of the Chinatown Roast Duck Nacho at Alan Wong's Restaurant.